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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.sfcv.org/article/a-new-tune-at-sf-state">https://www.sfcv.org/article/a-new-tune-at-sf-state</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">A New Tune at SF State?</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">By Andrew Gilbert - November 3, 2020<br></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><div><div><p><span><img alt="" class="gmail-caption" src="https://www.sfcv.org/sites/default/files/styles/reduced_size/public/u45884/Hafez_Modirzadeh_header1.jpeg?itok=xxhs3I_F" title="SFSU Professor Hafez Modirzadeh" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="392" height="220"><span>SFSU Professor Hafez Modirzadeh </span></span></p>
<p>When <a href="https://music.sfsu.edu/people/faculty/hafez-modirzadeh" target="_blank">Hafez Modirzadeh</a>
heard San Francisco State University President Lynn Mahoney’s soaring
words about the school’s commitment to equity, diversity, and racial
justice at the opening convocation in August, he decided to put the
institution to the test.</p>
<p>The School of Music’s only tenured professor versed in non-Western
traditions, he’s long felt that the highly diverse student body was
ill-served by the program’s Eurocentric focus, which is reflected in
both faculty hiring and course offerings. He laid out a far-reaching
agenda to transform the school’s curriculum and overall pedagogy in a
letter that circulated within school (and then found a wider audience
when saxophonist Francis Wong posted it on Facebook).</p>
<p>With the clarion call of the Black Lives Matter movement ringing in
the background, Modirzadeh described the SFSU music program as fettered
by “a deep intergenerational upholding of that archaic ‘separate but
equal’ logic that miseducates, leaving our students perpetually
revolving around a musical caste system stuck thick in ethnic myopia.”</p>
<p>A saxophonist and composer who has collaborated with some of jazz’s
most celebrated and influential artists, Modirzadeh seems to have struck
a chord. A series of meetings between students and faculty amplified
his call for change, and School of Music Director <a href="https://maestrocy.instantencore.com/web/bio.aspx" target="_blank">Cyrus Ginwala</a>
announced on Oct.13 the creation of a task force made up of faculty and
both current and former students to look at every aspect of the
program’s offerings.“We’re in transformative times,” Modirzadeh said.
“Not everyone is in agreement, but we’re having a dialogue. It’s not
simply that we teach all these white male composers and we need to
include some Black composers. We’ve got to address the
full-time/part-time caste system. Now we’re discussing how to
redistribute our teaching units, which comes down to income.”</p>
<p><span><img alt="" class="gmail-caption" src="https://www.sfcv.org/sites/default/files/styles/reduced_size/public/u45884/withstudents.nozaka.jpg?itok=W5-QqtLK" title="Hafez Modirzadeh with students | <em>Credit: Andy Nozaka</em>" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="392" height="220"><span>Hafez Modirzadeh with students | <em>Credit: Andy Nozaka</em></span></span></p>
<p>Modirzadeh is the first to acknowledge his privileged position as a
tenured professor who can advocate for radical changes without fear of
unemployment. His diagnosis of the music school’s systemic inequities
borrows a term recently applied to American racial history by Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson in her new book <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/653196/caste-oprahs-book-club-by-isabel-wilkerson/" target="_blank"><em>Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents</em></a>.</p>
<p><span><img alt="" class="gmail-caption" src="https://www.sfcv.org/sites/default/files/styles/reduced_size/public/u45884/Hafez_Modirzadeh_aside.jpeg?itok=WWQd9W34" title="Hafez Modirzadeh | <em>Credit: Walter Wagner</em>" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="300" height="225"><span><br></span></span></p><p><span><span>Hafez Modirzadeh | <em>Credit: Walter Wagner</em></span></span>Describing
the music school as beset by casteism, he wants to change not just how
and what traditions get taught. Inextricably linked to the dominance of
European classical music, he says, is the way that lecturers and adjunct
faculty are kept in line by the lack of any job protections.</p>
<p>“First class and second class is the crux of the matter,” Modirzadeh
said. “We can jostle around issues of race, but it comes down to
structural inequities, and a culture where lecturers are treated as
second-class citizens. The university system is a microcosm of other
systems. There’s no time for anybody to trip on guilt.” In many ways
Modirzadeh is also questioning the academic and intellectual divisions
between music departments that center Western practices and theory, and
ethnomusicology, which embeds the study of non-Western traditions within
a wider view of cultural practices.</p>
<p><span><img alt="" class="gmail-caption" src="https://www.sfcv.org/sites/default/files/styles/reduced_size/public/u45884/Cyrus_Ginwala_2.jpg?itok=Dmrp3RmM" title="Cyrus Ginwala" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="300" height="201"><span><br></span></span></p><p><span><span>Cyrus Ginwala</span></span>It’s
a debate that has roiled music departments since the summer, when
academics like CUNY music theorist Philip Ewell called on his field to
dismantle its “white racial frame” while unpacking the racist
assumptions of foundational music theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868-
1935) in <a href="https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.20.26.2/mto.20.26.2.ewell.html" target="_blank">this widely discussed article</a>.
For Ginwala, who recently started his second three-year term as the
School of Music’s director, the student experience is his primary focus.
He emphasizes that discussions about equity and inclusion are just
getting started, but the end result has to focus on student success.</p>
<p>“What do you need to do to attain and graduate student musicians with
a curriculum where they see themselves represented and they’re
successful once they leave?” Ginwala said. “That’s the lens to rethink
what we’re doing for the students we actually serve.”</p>
<p>With 11 full-time professors and some 30 adjuncts, the music
department’s faculty is overwhelmingly dedicated to Western classical
music (despite a handful of jazz artists). Flutist/percussionist <a href="https://music.sfsu.edu/people/faculty/john-calloway">John Calloway</a>
has led the Afro-Cuban ensemble class at SFSU for more than two
decades. A lone voice in the School of Music for a spectacularly rich
tradition with an extensive following in the Bay Area, he sees a
longstanding dynamic where classical music courses get the lion’s share
of support and everyone else gets crumbs.</p>
<p><span><img alt="" class="gmail-caption" src="https://www.sfcv.org/sites/default/files/styles/reduced_size/public/u45884/John_Calloway_aside1.jpg?itok=0hbFai8T" title="John Calloway" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="300" height="300"><span><br></span></span></p><p><span><span>John Calloway</span></span>“If you’re just offering one class in mariachi or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlife">highlife</a> and there’s no training like what you’d get in Western European music, the likelihood of it being rigorous is slim,” he said.</p>
<p>Calloway says he’s hesitated to make waves in the past, but with
Modirzadeh’s letter he felt he had to weigh in. “I’ve never felt an
overt threat about speaking out, but the culture of being a lecturer is
that you have less rights and serve at the pleasure of school,” he said.
“It’s the old system. No one’s mean to you, but if you start rocking
the boat, people get scared. That’s what’s happening now.”</p>
<p>The music school isn’t the only SFSU program undergoing a reckoning, according to SFSU Asian American Studies Professor <a href="https://aas.sfsu.edu/dariotis-wei-ming" target="_blank">Wei Ming Dariotis</a>.
But the school of music has been on her radar for some two decades,
“through what I’ve heard both from colleagues and students,” she said. </p>
<p><span><img alt="" class="gmail-caption" src="https://www.sfcv.org/sites/default/files/styles/reduced_size/public/u45884/Wei_Ming_Dariotis_aside2.jpg?itok=JNVPWpso" title="Wei Ming Dariotis" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="300" height="284"><span>Wei Ming Dariotis</span></span>“One
of the principles we use is inclusivity and belonging,” continued
Dariotis, who is a member of the newly created music department task
force via her position as faculty director of the Center for Equity and
Excellence in Teaching and Learning. “Unfortunately, I’ve heard stories
from students that their vocal style was not something that could be
supported in the School of Music. In particular, students who sang with
more of a gospel style, typically students of color, quite often Asian
American students.”</p>
<p>Mali Carter, an aspiring jazz pianist from Oakland who graduated with
a bachelor’s in music from SFSU in 2016, describes a troubled student
career with a lack of support at almost every level. She felt dismissed
by several faculty members and isolated academically. “Within the music
department I was pretty much the only Black woman jazz pianist,” she
said, adding that it wasn’t until she connected with Modirzadeh that she
had an ally in seeking an alternative path to the degree.</p>
<p>“He stepped in and was a real mentor for me when I was having lots of
trouble in the music department being treated fairly,” Carter said, “It
was a hard-fought degree to get. I ended up taking some modified theory
classes, as opposed to Western theory.”</p>
<p><span><img alt="" class="gmail-caption" src="https://www.sfcv.org/sites/default/files/styles/reduced_size/public/u45884/SFSU_Music_Campus.png?itok=nQCtGDWs" title="SFSU Creative Arts campus" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="392" height="220"><span>SFSU Creative Arts campus</span></span></p>
<p>Whatever problems might exist in the School of Music, the program
continues to attract top-flight student talent. San Francisco native <a href="http://www.samreidermusic.com/" target="_blank">Sam Reider</a>,
a pianist and accordionist steeped in jazz and an international array
of folkloric traditions, moved back to the Bay Area from Brooklyn in
December. He’s performed around the world under the auspices of the U.S.
Department of State as a musical ambassador, engaging in musical
exchanges with artists in China, Laos, Vietnam, Estonia, Turkey,
Azerbaijan, and beyond.</p>
<p><span><img alt="" class="gmail-caption" src="https://www.sfcv.org/sites/default/files/styles/reduced_size/public/u45884/Sam_Reider_header1.jpg?itok=QBQ7mWSN" title="Sam Reider" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="392" height="220"><span>Sam Reider</span></span></p>
<p>Grounded by the pandemic, he decided to pursue a master’s degree in
composition at SFSU to develop techniques as a composer and
orchestrator. He’s looking to use the tools of European classical
composition in his work with folkloric artists.</p>
<p>“I see cross-cultural collaboration as a potent way forward in this
discussion of what constitutes American culture,” said Reider, who’s
releasing an album next year with Venezuelan cuatro master Jorge Glem
and special guest Paquito D’Rivera, the legendary Cuban reed player. “If
I was designing my perfect music program it would align closely with
all the things in Hafez’s letter, with an equitable distribution of
resources for traditions from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South
America, in conversation with European classical music.” </p>
<p>The School of Music’s history embodies the conflicting impulses that
are playing out once again in the era of Black Lives Matter. Jazz is now
a well-established part of the program, but the school’s most famous
and influential graduate, saxophonist <a href="http://www.johnhandy.com/" target="_blank">John Handy</a>,
faced outright hostility as a student in the 1950s. He had already made
a series of epochal recordings with bassist/composer Charles Mingus in
1959, including the Columbia albums <em>Mingus Ah Um</em> and <em>Mingus Dynasty</em>, when he endured a Kafkaesque ordeal in which hostile professors and staff undermined his progress toward a degree.</p>
<p><span><img alt="" class="gmail-caption" src="https://www.sfcv.org/sites/default/files/styles/reduced_size/public/u45884/John_Handy_header1.jpg?itok=Wk-Vo7Sb" title="John Handy" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="392" height="220"><span>John Handy</span></span></p>
<p>“I took every course they had to get a B.A.,” Handy told me in an
interview several years ago. “I finally graduated at the age of 30 and I
had 174 units. But you never forget your alma mater, no matter what
happens.”</p>
<p>By the late 1960s, in the wake of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World_Liberation_Front_strikes_of_1968" target="_blank">Third World Liberation Front Strike</a>,
SFSU was looking to diversify the faculty, and the School of Music
hired Handy to teach a jazz history class. He held the position for more
than a decade, often turning students away from the over-subscribed
course. After he retired, Handy was invited back as an
artist-in-residence, while Keith Morrison, then dean for the College of
Creative Arts, saw to it that the school honored Handy with two jazz
festivals in his name.</p>
<p>Handy served as a mentor for Modirzadeh when he joined the SFSU
faculty in 1998, and has continued to provide guidance throughout the
years. Given his pioneering work with Indian sarod master Ali Akbar
Khan, Handy provides an ideal model for the spirit of inquiry and
openness that could guide his alma mater’s evolution. There’s no
consensus amongst the faculty about what kind of changes should be made.
The faculty is an uncomfortable place,” Modirzadeh said. “It’s not
personal. It’s structural. We’ve got brilliant, devoted faculty. Many
are second to none in their fields and great artists who are loved by
their students. We’re at this beautiful moment, but we have to trust
each other.”</p>
</div></div></div><p>A Los Angeles native based in the Berkeley area since 1996, <a href="https://www.sfcv.org/author/andrew-gilbert" target="_blank">Andrew Gilbert</a> covers jazz, international music and dance for KQED's <em>California Report</em>, <em>The Mercury News</em>, <em>San Francisco Chronicle</em>, <a href="https://www.berkeleyside.com/" target="_blank"><em>Berkeleyside</em></a> and other publications.</p></div></div>
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